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Did you know that Liberace did not just go to his grave denying he was gay, but, in 1957, sued the London "Daily Mirror" for even implying it by printing that he was, "...the summit of sex--the pinnacle of masculine, feminine, and neuter. Everything that he, she, and it can ever want... a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love"? And that he WON?

He sued "Confidential" magazine the same year for an explicit story called, "Why Liberace's Theme Song Should be 'Mad About the Boy.'" They didn't call him a homosexual, but said at various times, "coo[ing," and "flouncing" and "simpering" and "min[cing]" and "reeking of perfume and wearing [only a] robe" he had physically tried to force a man to have sex with him who literally had to fight him off. Liberace easily won again by proving he hadn't been in Dallas when one of the alleged attacks was to have happened.

The hiding-in-plain sight relationship [or former relationship] between Siegfried & Roy is no harder to believe than the voluntary prior censorship and active censorship of stories as recently as last week about Merv Griffin.

What the "New York Times" said 19 years ago about the made-for-TV movie after Liberace's death, still applies to others:

"those beaming elderly ladies who loved him as the devoted son they always wanted, will still be able to avoid realities they might find unpleasant. ...In one scene, an obviously ill Liberace bitterly denounces the 'rumors' about his having AIDS. It's only in a printed epilogue that we learn he died from complications connected with acquired immunity deficiency syndrome. Functional illiterates, presumably, will be none the wiser. The sense of reluctance to deal with the truth is palpable."

Alas, it's not just "elderly ladies," but many gays who are denouncing those of us who think Nancy Reagan's best friend, Merv, died a selfish, evil man who could have possibly persuaded her husband to take AIDS seriously and shared some of his billion+ dollars to fight it and for gay equality — even from his closet.